Indian Independence And Partition History Essay

Indian Independence And Partition History EssayIt began with the idea of Mahatma Gandhi to free India from the control of the British, in 1930, Mahatma Gandhi proposed a non-violence frame in to protest the British Salt Tax. To understand why the British salt tax was so oppressive to the Indian people, it helps to know a bit astir(predicate) the subcontinents climate and culture. Indias hot weather promotessweating, which drains the human body of its salt supply. Since Indians dont eat much meat a natural source of salt they relied on subsidiary salt to maintain a healthy amount in the body. Taxing the mineral that Indian people relied on for survival was just one focusing that the British government kept Indians under its thumb. As salt is necessary in everyones daily diet, everyone in India was affected and upon realizing the scheme of the British, the salt march was post in motion.Before embarking on a 240 miles march from Sabarmati to Dandi to protest the salt tax, Gandhi sent a letter to the Lord Irwin, the viceroy of India, forewarning their plans of civil noncomplianceIf my letter makes no appeal to your heart, on the eleventh day of this month I sh whole told proceed with such co-workers of the Ashram as I can take, to disregard the purvey of the Salt Laws. I regard this tax to be the most iniquitous of all from the poor mans standpoint. As the Independence consummation is essentially for the poorest in the land, the scratch will be made with this evil. (Gandhi)Acknowledged of this action, the viceroy could have arrested him easily but by doing so could spark an intense backlash so he only replied Gandhi was contemplating a course of action which is clearly bound to involve violation of the law and danger to the public peace.As promised, on defect 12, 1930, Gandhi and 78 male satyagrahis (activists of truth and resolution) started marching toward the Arabian Sea. It has been told that along his way, the roads were watered, and fresh flowers and green leaves strewn on the path and as the satyagrahis walked, they did so to the tune of one of Gandhis positron emission tomography bhajans,Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram, sung by the great Hindustani vocalist, Pandit Paluskar.Each village he passed by, he convinced government officials to resign in protest and to further people to pledge nonviolence, therefore, more and more men joined the march. On April 5, 1930, after a 24 day-long journey, Gandhi and his followers reached the coast, he collected a globe of salt and immediately broke the law. No sooner had Gandhi violated the law than everyone started following him, picking up salt off the coast. A month after Gandhi completed his march he was arrested for breaking the law and soon after Indias prisons were full with 60.000 others practicing this simple act of civil disobedience. (Hatt, (2002).p. 33)WomenAgain, though women were full and active members of Gandhis community, and galore(postnominal) were to be closely associ ated with him over a lengthy period of time, as he went so far to say that the women have come to look upon me as one of themselves., no women were present among the 78 people chosen to accompany him on the march. An explanation for this was that Gandhi felt women wouldnt provoke law enforcers like their male counterparts, making the officers react violently to non-violence. As salt is an important householdnecessity, Gandhi strongly favoured the emancipation of women. He especially recruited women to go into in the salt tax campaigns and the ostracize of foreign products.( Norvell, 1997.) Sarma (1994) had concluded that by enlisting women in his campaigns, including the salt tax campaign, anti-untouchability campaign and the peasant movement, Gandhi had gave many women a new self-confidence and dignity in the mainstream of Indian public life.Folk HeroGandhi was portrayed as a messiah (the long-awaited savior of an entire people), a way of incorporating radical forces within the p easantry into the peaceable resistance movement. It was told that in thousand of villages, plays were performed presenting Gandhi as the rebirth of earlier Indian nationalist leaders, or even as a demigod. The plays built support among nescient peasants steeped in traditional Hindu culture. Similar messianic imagery appeared in popular songs and poems, and in Congress-sponsored religious pageants and celebrations.In this way, not only a kin group hero image of Gandhi was made, but also, the Congress was adoptn as his sacred instrument. .( Murali, (1985)NegotiationsThe government, represented byLord Edward Irwin, decided to negotiate with Gandhi. The Gandhi-Irwin Pactwas signed in March 1931.The agreement between Gandhi and Irwin was signed on March 5, 1931. Following are the salient points of this agreementThe Congress would discontinue the Civil Disobedience Movement.The Congress would participate in the Round Table Conference.The Government would withdraw all ordinances issued to curb the Congress.The Government would withdraw all prosecutions relating to offenses not involving violence.The Government would release all persons undergoing sentences of manacles for their activities in the civil disobedience movement.The pact shows that the British Government was anxious to bring the Congress to the conference table. The British Government agreed to free all political prisoners, in return for the discontinuationof the civil disobedience movement. Also as a event of the pact, Gandhi was invited to attend the Round Table Conference in London as the sole representative of the Indian National Congress. Gandhi was sent by the Congress as its sole representative, but the negotiations proved to be disappointing, for the most part that various other Indian communities had been encouraged by the British to send a representative and make the claim that they were not prepared to hold in an India under the domination of the Congress. Furthermore, it focused on the I ndian princes and Indian minorities rather than on a transfer of power.Yet never before had the British consented to negotiate directly with the Congress, and Gandhi met Irwin as his equal. In this respect, the man who most loathed Gandhi, Winston Churchill, understood the level of Gandhis achievement when he stated it alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the viceregal palace, while he is still organizing and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor.The result was unexpected as Gandhi was again arrested, and the government tried and failed to negate his influence by completely isolating him from his followers. (Herman (20080.pp. 375-377)cosmos War II and Quit India.When terra firma War II broke out in 1939, Britain turned to its colonies, includingIndia, for soldiers. His attitude during the war years was difficult to define he felt very touch about the rise of fascism around the world, but he also had become a committed pacifist)For one thing, he would never compromise over pacifism. War, for whatsoever cause, was in his view a bad thing. Though evil must be resisted, it could never be fought effectively by violence, for violence was the root of all evil. Resistance to Germany and Japan must therefore be by the same means of non-violence which he had himself used in India against the British. No doubt, he remembered the lessons of the Boer War and World War I loyalty to the compound government during war did not result in better treatment afterwards.The crisis in the war-time relations between Mr Gandhi and the British Government came during the Cripps mission in the spring of 1942. Sir Stafford Cripps took with him proposals for establishing in India immediately after the war Dominion status of full self-government, with the right to declar e independence, the minimum provide being made to render the scheme acceptable to Moslems. In March of 1942, British cabinet minister Sir Stafford Cripps offered the Indians a form of autonomy within the British Empire in exchange for military support. The Cripps offer included a plan to separate the Hindu and Muslim sections of India, which Gandhi found unacceptable. The Indian independence movement rejected the plan.That summer, Gandhi issued a call for Britain to Quit India immediately. The crucial issue was immediate independence, on which Congress insisted. This was Gandhis and the Congress Partys most ultimate upheaval aimed at securing the British exit from India. (Gandhi,1990, p.309.) The manner in which British control was to be withdrawn and a provisional Government substituted was set out along with a threat of mass civil disobedience, under Gandhis direction. This made Quit Indiathe most forceful movement in the history of the struggle, with mass arrests and violence o n an unprecedented scale. The colonial government reacted by arresting all of the Congress leadership, including Gandhi and his wife Kasturba. As anti-colonial protests grew, the Raj government arrested and jailed hundreds of thousands of Indians.Tragically, his wife Kasturba died in February 1944 after 18 months in prison. Gandhi became poorly ill with malaria, so the British released him from prison upon realizing that the political repercussions would have been intensive, if he had also died while imprisoned and enrage the entire nation beyond control.Indian Independence and PartitionIn 1944, Britain pledged to grant independence to India once the war was over. Gandhi called for the Congress to reject the proposal once more, since it proposed a division of India among Hindu, Muslim, andSikhstates. As a rule, Gandhi was opposed to the concept ofpartitionas it contradicted his vision of religious unity. (Reprinted inThe Essential Gandhi An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Wo rk, and Ideas, Louis Fischer, ed., 2002 (reprint edition) pp. 106-108.)When sectarian violence rocked Indias cities in 1946, leaving more than 5,000 dead, Congress members convinced Gandhi that the only options were partition or civil war. He reluctantly agreed, and then went on a hunger pound that single-handedly stopped the violence in Delhi and Calcutta.On August 14, 1947, theIndian Independence Actwas invoked. In border areas some 10-12 million people move from one side to another and upwards of a half million were killed in communal riots pitting Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs.According to to prominent Norwegian historian,Jens Arup Seip there by chance could have been much more bloodshed during the partition if there hadnt been for his teachings, the efforts of his followers, and his own presence.